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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Feed you

Wow, that’s what I call feedback! It’s a shame pretty much everyone hates the new design but I like it so it stays. I’ve taken a few tips though and tweaked the link colours a bit, as well as making a few other small changes such as a darker green for the header and a 1em margin around the page.

In an attempt to satiate the voracious appetite for RSS displayed by some of my visitors I’ve set up two new feeds: Blog comments and Blogmarks. I don’t use an aggregator myself so I’d appreciate feedback on how well they work. I’ve also put together a blogmarks archive—no search engine yet, but it’s on the list.

Posted 26th November 2003 at 1:55 am

This is Feed you by Simon Willison, posted on 26th November 2003.

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13 comments

  1. I like the improvements, including that of the header color I criticized earlier, and the margins. And I love the :hover states on the form fields. I still don't think it stands out as much as the old design did, but perhaps the more discrete look was intentional?

    On a sidenote, my initial thoughts on the redesign was that it would make for a really nice "night style", whereas the previous higher contrast design still works perfectly as a "day style".

    I'm on a mission here actually, as I do lot of night time lights out surfing, and hitting a bright white page really hurts the eyes. I've implemented night styles on my blog and personal site for those interested. The colors will appear too dark when viewed in a lit up room though.

    (btw, it seems the preview comments page still uses the old style sheet?)

    Lars - 26th November 2003 09:11 - #

  2. And your comments feed works just fine (using Bloglines).

    Lars - 26th November 2003 09:19 - #

  3. I looked at the comments RSS but I couldn't click on the link to go back to your block because they show up on my system as "file:///archive/2003/11/26/feedYou".

    A trip to the Feed Validator soon revealed the problem...

    The Feed for the blogmarks is fine though.

    Kayode Okeyode - 26th November 2003 09:24 - #

  4. I actually prefer your new design to your old one, partly because I can't stand yellow/orange.

    Hope you haven't died laughing at the code I sent you. ;-)

    Mili - 26th November 2003 10:14 - #

  5. A direct link to allow others to comment in the comments feed would be nice. Every site allowing comments should have an RSS comments feed -- it makes following discussions so much easier.

    Martin Little - 26th November 2003 11:55 - #

  6. Umm ... I don't know how carefully people looked, but there's a big problem with your blogmarks feed -- every item has a pubDate of "Thu, 1 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0100" ... this makes it pretty much useless in an aggregator.

    Joe Grossberg - 26th November 2003 14:38 - #

  7. Thanks for the feedback - I've fixed the dates in the blogmarks feed and the relative links in the comments feed.

    Simon Willison - 26th November 2003 16:09 - #

  8. latest improvements are a great improvement on the old improvements :-) great job! -- clint

    clint - 26th November 2003 16:50 - #

  9. This is harder to read. You post frequently and has a good "industry" overview, so I visit frequently. It's simple - when you need to _read_ something, nothing beats black on white. I prefer the green over orange, but light green is hard to read on.

    Aleksandar Vacic - 26th November 2003 22:07 - #

  10. The problem there is that I've had complaints from some people (in particular my girlfriend) that black on white is hard to read. I think the only solution in the long term is going to be a style switcher so people can choose the stylesheet that best fits their own preferences.

    Simon Willison - 26th November 2003 22:30 - #

  11. Various people, various preferables. :) Nonetheless, I'm suprised that anyone finds b/w hard to read. Almost all of the books are printed as such and you get used to it. Zeldman's default style is midlight grey on white, and although I like it better than strong dark style, I still use the latter since it's easier to read. But, then again, it's down to single person. Luckily we have style switchers.

    Aleksandar Vacic - 27th November 2003 01:15 - #

  12. Problems with reading black on white is surprisingly common -- it is often linked to dyslexia and can be a major issue for people ... in fact the colours can affect their reading far worse than the words themselves in some cases. Although many people do just "get used" to black on white as it is the most common in text, as you say, for some people the only way they can feasibly read a book etc is by taking a colour transparency and placing it over the book. I think it's quite forward-thinking of Simon to accommodate those with this sort of issue ... but maybe he should implement the style-switcher so everyone can stop bitching ;-)

    Meri - 27th November 2003 09:46 - #

  13. Black and white is harsh, but you can always turn the brightness down on the monitor.

    The ideal solution may be to use a background colour close to white, such as very light grey or yellow. (My website uses brown.)

    The book analogy isn't strictly true. Cheap books are an off-white colour. Only on high-quality magazines do you see pure white used.

    Besides, we read books and magazines using reflected light (which is much easier to cope with) whereas screens use pure light itself. Coupled with the low resolution (where pixels are clearly visible) it doesn't help much.

    Having said that, the striplights in the office are that damn bright, I prefer reading text on the screen.

    Chris Hester - 28th November 2003 11:14 - #

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